To visit the shelter, you have to be a guest of the hotel. But a night’s stay at the Metropole is one splurge worth making anyway.

The shelter is a warren of corridors and chambers, preserved as it was in the days when sirens resounded all over Hanoi. Though this space is dank and austere, it’s relatively luxurious when you compare it to the earthen tunnels of Vinh Moc and Cu Chi.

Upon rediscovery, the hotel didn’t find any skeletons in this closet. Just an old wine bottle, some old light bulbs and old electrical outlets and air ducts. Oh, and some graffiti from one Bob Devereaux, an Australian diplomat who scratched his name in the wall one day back in 1975.